Inspirations for garden design in Southend on Sea!

I am always looking for ideas for gardens that may reflect the surroundings of potential clients. Having recently moved back to my roots, I have started thinking about ways in which I might try to create something unusual for a garden design in Southend on Sea. Here I have developed a circular, marine based theme which was inspired by Barbara Hepworths Pelagos. A deep spiral encircles the space dividing lawn from hard landscaping. Access via a small pathway constructed from slate slithers the pathway then flicks round to the left before goi g back on itself and curving round the main patio space. An undulating wall sweeping round the outside of the garden rises and falls creating depth and also allowing viability to the planting beds running round the edge of the space.

A specimen tree in the middle of the garden helps create a central punt as well as allowing for shade.

(Pelagos (‘sea’ in Greek) was inspired by a view of the bay at St Ives in Cornwall, where two arms of land enfold the sea on either side. The hollowed-out wood has a spiral formation resembling a shell, a wave or the roll of a hill. Hepworth wanted the taut strings to express ‘the tension I felt between myself and the sea, the wind or the hills’. She moved to Cornwall with her husband Ben Nicholson in 1939, and produced some of her finest sculpture in its wild landscape.)